Hi, I'm Andrea Morgan. I was born in Rouen, Normandy and from a very young age I was fascinated by the world of rugby, in general, and cheerleading in particular.
A few months ago, I discovered that the famous Welsh pirate Henry Morgan was an ancestor of mine and that I had brothers and sisters to meet. Thanks to The Grandma, an Andorran grandmother, who made every effort to locate us, today I know them all and to celebrate this meeting we decided to spend two months together travelling and reviewing our level of English because we have all decided to retire to Kingston, Jamaica, to enjoy the Morgan fortune, and English is its official language.
-Good morning and thanks to attend us.
-Good morning. It's an honour.
-What's your full name?
-My full name is Andrea Morgan Sinclair.
-How do you spell your second surname?
-S-I-N-C-L-A-I-R
-Are you a student? What are you studying?
-No, I'm not a student at the moment. I finished my studies a few years ago and now I work full-time.
-Are you working? What is your job?
-Yes, I am. I work as a sports cheerleader and also as a cultural entertainer. I perform at sports events, festivals, and community celebrations.
-Do you like your job? Why?
-Yes, I love my job because it allows me to meet many people and create a positive atmosphere. I enjoy performing and helping people have a good time.
-Where are you from?
-I'm from Rouen, a beautiful city in Normandy, in the north of France.
-How long have you lived there?
-I lived there for most of my life. Recently, I have spent some time travelling for work, but Rouen is still my hometown.
-Why are you studying English?
-I'm studying English because I often work with international visitors and performers. English helps me communicate with people from different countries.
-How long have you been studying English?
-I've been studying English for two months. I practise with The Morgans.
-Tell me about your city.
-Rouen is famous for its history, beautiful cathedral, and traditional Norman architecture. It is a lively city with many cultural events throughout the year.
-What music do you like?
-I enjoy pop music, dance music, and some French contemporary music. I often listen to energetic songs because they help me prepare for performances.
-Can you play any instrument?
-Unfortunately, I can't play any instrument very well. I learned a little piano when I was younger, but I mainly focus on dancing and performing.
-Tell me about your favourite place.
-My favourite place is the historic centre of Rouen. I love walking through the old streets and visiting the cathedral. It has a very special atmosphere.
-What do you like doing in your free time?
-In my free time, I enjoy dancing, travelling, reading about culture and history, and spending time with my friends and family.
-Do you practise any sport? Which?
-Yes, I do. I practise dance fitness and gymnastics regularly because they help me stay fit for my performances. I also enjoy running a few times a week.
-What is the best thing about being a cheerleader?
-The best thing is the energy from the audience. It's very rewarding when people enjoy the performance and join in the celebration.
-Would you like to work abroad in the future?
-Yes, I would. I think working abroad would be a great opportunity to learn about new cultures and improve my English even more.
-What cultural events do you usually participate in?
-I usually participate in festivals, local celebrations, parades, and community events. I enjoy promoting culture and bringing people together.
-How is a normal day with The Morgans?
-We haven't got similar days. Every day is different and this is something very important because it offers to you the possibility of living fantastic experiences every day and you can enjoy them with all your heart because you know that next day you're going to put the score to zero and we're going to start again. It's a non-stopping life.
-Which is your best memory with The Morgans?
-It’s difficult to choose only one. I remembered when we travelled to Normandy to visit Mount Saint Michel. It was a great surprise and I loved coming back home.
-Which is your favourite song?
I like 'Gracias a la Vida', a song written by Mercedes Sosa. I remember a great performance by Joan Baez and the Chilean composer Nano Stern.
Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados Con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos Playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos Y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio.
Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet. With them I have traversed cities and puddles Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains. And your house, your street and your patio.
Today is a special day for the city of Barcelona because it celebrates one of its three patron saints, Santa Eulàlia, the patron saint most beloved by Barcelona residents who know the history of the city and are aware of the symbolic and cultural importance of this religious figure.
The Grandma had planned to go out to enjoy the day and honour her patron saint but a strong wind advisory has stopped all outdoor events so she has stayed home reading and listening to songs that refer to the wind such as Wind of Change by Scorpions, Sempre Hi Ha Vent by Maria del Mar Bonet, Veles e Vents by Ausiàs Marc, Blowin' in the Wind by Bob Dylan, Candle in the Wind by Elton John, Against the Wind by Bob Seeger, The Wind by Cat Stevens, Wild Is the Wind by Nina Simone, Ride the Wild Wind by Queen, and one of her favourites Dust in the Wind by Kansas, a song that reminds us that time passes (tempus fugit) and we are an insignificant part of the universe. Although they are all beautiful and she can't just decide one, she has thought that today she would choose Catch The Wind by Donovan because it reminds her of the Joan Baez concert for her 75th birthday.
Despite hearing Joan Baez later at the Palau de la Música Catalana and at Festival Jardins de Pedralbes in Barcelona, at the Terramar Festival in Sitges, and at Portaferrada Festival in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, she didn't play it again in none of these four places.
Catch the Wind is a song written and recorded by Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. Pye Records released Catch the Wind backed with Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do? as Donovan's debut release in the United Kingdom on 28 February 1965. The single reached No. 4 in the United Kingdom singles chart. Hickory Records released the single in the United States in April 1965, where it reached No. 23 in the United States Billboard Hot 100.
The single version of Catch the Wind was recorded at Olympic Studios in London. Donovan played guitar and sang on the recording, and was accompanied by nine session musicians: four viola players, four violin players and a string bass player. According to Donovan biographyer Lorne Murdoch, the string arrangement on the single version was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with an arrangement written by Ken Lewis of the Ivy League. He additionally opined that Donovan's commercial recording career commenced with the recording of CatchThe Wind in February 1965.
In May 1965, Pye Records released a different version of Catch the Wind on Donovan's debut LP record album What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, retitled Catch the Wind in the US. While the single version featured vocal echo and a string section, the album version lacked those elements and instead featured Donovan playing harmonica.
Cash Box described it as a medium-paced, folk-styled low-down bluesey romancer, with a Bob Dylan-like vocal. Record World likewise described it as Dylanesque.
When Epic Records was compiling Donovan's Greatest Hits in 1968, the label was either unable or unwilling to secure the rights to the original recordings of Catchthe Wind" and Donovan's follow-up single, Colours. Donovan re-recorded both songs for the album, with a full backing band including Big Jim Sullivan playing guitar and Mickie Most producing.
In the chilly hours and minutes Of uncertainty, I want to be In the warm hold of your loving mind
To feel you all around me And to take your hand, along the sand Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind
When sundown pales the sky I want to hide a while, behind your smile And everywhere I'd look, your eyes I'd find
For me to love you now Would be the sweetest thing That would make me sing Ah, but I may as well, try and catch the wind
When rain has hung the leaves with tears I want you near, to kill my fears To help me to leave all my blues behind
For standin' in your heart Is where I want to be, and I long to be Ah, but I may as well, try and catch the wind Ah, but I may as well, try and catch the wind
The way I sing my songs leads the listener into a place of introspection, a state of mind that can trigger self-healing and the kind of profound rest you cannot get from sleep alone.
Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice.
Baez
has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums.
Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least
six other languages. Although generally regarded as a folk singer,
her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s,
and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country, and gospel
music.
Although a songwriter herself, Baez
generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by
Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne,
Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling Stones, Pete
Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and many others. On her past several
albums, she has found success interpreting songs of more recent
songwriters, including Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Natalie
Merchant and Joe Henry.
She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status.
Songs of acclaim include Diamonds & Rust and covers of Phil Ochs's There but for Fortune and The Band's The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. She is also known for Farewell, Angelina, Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word, Forever Young, Here's to You, Joe Hill, Sweet Sir Galahad and We Shall Overcome.
She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts. Baez also performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, humanrights and the environment.
Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, 2017.
Baez was born on Staten Island, New York, on January 9, 1941. Joan'sgrandfather, the Reverend Alberto Baez, left the Catholic Church to
become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when her father was
two years old. Her father, Albert Baez (1912–2007), was born in Puebla,
Mexico and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to
-and advocated for- a Spanish-speaking congregation.
Due to
her father's work with UNESCO, their family moved many times, living in
towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain,
Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq.
Joan Baez became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series American Masters, is the true core of her life, looming larger than music.
The opening line of Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With is I was born gifted, referencing her singing voice, which she explained was given to her and for which she can take no credit. A friend of Joan's
father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her
to play rhythm and blues, the music she was listening to at the time.
Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a
life of drug addiction.
When Baez was 13, her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend took her to a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and Baez
found herself strongly moved by his music. She soon began practicing
the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her
very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga,
California for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City,
California Jewish congregation. A few years later in 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson acoustic guitar.
Her true professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. Following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, Joan Baez (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists.
From the early-to-mid-1960s, Baez
emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she
introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan, and was emulated
by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, and
Bonnie Raitt.
Baez's distinctive vocal style and political activism had a significant impact on American popular music. She was one of the first musicians to use her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, singing and marching for human rights and peace.
May your hands always be busy May your feet always be swift May you have a strong foundation When the winds of changes shift May your heart always be joyful May your song always be sung And may you stay
Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. The weather is cold and there are some alerts of snow. She lives in Tibidabo Mountain and there are more risks when the weather is not good.
She has decided to phone to one of her old friends, Joan Baez,who celebrates her 80th anniversary today. They have been talking about human rights and civil protests and about the last incredible events occurred in Washington, DC.
This is not new for The Grandma because she lives in a place that suffers the tyranny of those who do not respect the rule of law forcing legal presidents to go to exile, forcing legal presidents to leave their seats and elected deputies are imprisoned only for having different ideas and wanting a free land. It is the abuse that suffers the minorities, and The Grandma belongs to one of them.
Joan and The Grandma have been talking about a great woman who also belongs to a minority that once -before the arrival of the Castilian colones- was a majority and lived free in their land. Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Prize and K'iche'Indigenous feminist and human rights activist from Guatemala, who also was born on a day like today in 1959.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum (born 9 January 1959) is a K'iche' Indigenous feminist and human rights activist from Guatemala.
Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.
She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, in addition to other prestigious awards. She is the subject of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) and the author of the autobiographical work, Crossing Borders (1998), among other works. Menchú is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. She ran for president of Guatemala in 2007 and 2011, having founded the country's first Indigenous political party, Winaq.
Rigoberta Menchú was born to a poor Indigenous family of Q'iche' Maya descent in Laj Chimel, a rural area in the north-central Guatemalan province of El Quiché. Her family was one of many Indigenous families who could not sustain themselves on the small pieces of land they were left with after the Spanish conquest of Guatemala.
Menchú's mother began her career as a midwife at age sixteen, and continued to practice using traditional medicinal plants until she was murdered at age 43. Her father was a prominent activist for the rights of Indigenous farmers in Guatemala. Both of her parents regularly attended Catholic church, and her mother remained very connected to her Maya spirituality and identity.
Menchú considers herself to be the perfect mix of both her parents. She believes in many teachings of the Catholic Church, but her mother's Maya influence also taught Menchú the importance of living in harmony with nature and retaining her Maya culture.
In 1979-80 her brother, Patrocinio, and her mother, Juana Tum Kótoja, were
kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan army. Her
father, Vicente Menchú Perez, died in the 1980 burning of the Spanish
Embassy, which occurred after urban guerrillas took hostages and were
attacked by government security forces.
In January 2015, Pedro García
Arredondo, a former police commander of the Guatemalan army, was
convicted of attempted murder and crimes against humanity for his role
in the embassy attack.
In 1984, Menchú's other brother, Victor, was shot to death after he surrendered to the Guatemalan army, was threatened by soldiers, and tried to escape.
In 1995, Menchú married Ángel Canil, a Guatemalan, in a Mayan ceremony. They had a Catholic wedding in January 1998; at that time they also buried their son Tz'unun, hummingbird in Maya, who had died after being born prematurely in December. They adopted a son, Mash Nahual J’a, Spirit of Water in Maya.
From a young age, Menchú was active alongside her father, advocating for the rights of Indigenous farmers through the Committee for Peasant Unity. Menchú often faced discrimination for wanting to join her male family members in the fight for justice, but she was inspired by her mother to continue making space for herself. She believes that the roots of Indigenousoppression in Guatemala stem from issues of exploitation and coloniallandownership. Her early activism focused on defending her people from colonial exploitation.
After leaving school, Menchú worked as an activist campaigning against human rights violations committed by the Guatemalan armed forces during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. Many of the human rights violations that occurred during the war targeted Indigenous peoples. Women were targets of physical and sexual violence at the hands of the military.
In 1981, Menchú was exiled and escaped to Mexico where she found refuge in the home of a Catholic bishop in Chiapas.
Menchú continued to organize resistance to oppression in Guatemala and organize the struggle for Indigenous rights by co-founding the United Republic of Guatemalan Opposition.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly Mayan Indians, fled to Mexico from 1982 to 1984 at the height of Guatemala's 36-year civil war.
A year later, in 1982, she narrated a book about her life, titled Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia, My Name is Rigoberta Menchú, and this is how my awareness was born, to Venezuelan author and anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos, which was translated into five other languages including English and French.
Menchú narrated the book in Spanish, although she had only learned to speak it three years prior. Spanish was a language that had been forced upon Indigenous peoples by colonizers, but Menchú sought to master the language and turn it against her oppressors. The book made her an international icon at the time of the ongoing conflict in Guatemala and brought attention to the suffering of Indigenous peoples under an oppressive government regime.
Menchú served as the Presidential Goodwill Ambassador for the 1996 Peace Accords in Guatemala. That same year she received the Peace AbbeyCourage of Conscience Award in Boston.
After the Guatemalan Civil War ended, Menchú campaigned to have Guatemalan political and military establishment members tried in Spanish courts.
In 1999, she filed a complaint before a court in Spain because prosecutions of civil-war era crimes in Guatemala was practically impossible. These attempts stalled as the Spanish courts determined that the plaintiffs had not yet exhausted all possibilities of seeking justice through the legal system of Guatemala.
In 1996, Menchú was appointed as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in recognition of her activism for the rights of Indigenous people. In this capacity, she acted as a spokesperson for the first International Decade of theWorld's Indigenous Peoples (1995–2004), where she worked to improve international collaboration on issues such as environment, education, health care, and human rights for Indigenous peoples.
In 2015, Menchú met with the general director of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, in order to solidify relations between Guatemala and the organization.
Since 2003, Menchú has become involved in the Indigenous pharmaceutical industry as president of Salud para Todos, Health for All, and the company Farmacias Similares, with the goal of offering low-cost generic medicines. As president of this organization, Menchú has received pushback from large pharmaceutical companies due to her desire to shorten the patent life of certain AIDS and cancer drugs to increase their availability and affordability.
In 2006, Menchú was one of the founders of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. These six women, representing North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, decided to bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace, justice and equality. It is the goal of the Nobel Women's Initiative to help strengthen women's rights around the world.
Menchú is a member of PeaceJam, an organization whose mission is to use Nobel Peace Laureates as mentors and models for young people and provide a way for these Laureates to share their knowledge, passions, and experience.
She travels around the world speaking to youth through PeaceJam conferences. She has also been a member of the Foundation Chirac's honor committee since the foundation was launched in 2008 by former French president Jacques Chirac in order to promote world peace.
Menchú has continued her activism in recent years by continuing to raise awareness for issues including political and economic inequality and climate change.
The indigenous peoples never had, and still do not have, the place that they should have occupied in the progress and benefits of science and technology, although they represented an important basis for this development.
The Grandma wants to talk about the Free Speech Movement, an American civil movement that was launched on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, on a day like today in 1964. Two years ago, on a day like today, The Grandma was trying to get her right to vote in the Catalan Referendum after sleeping all night in the polling station, a school, and defending during all the morning her ballot box against the violence executed by the Spanish Police against the voters. Right to vote is a civil right, a human right, and the base of a democracy in the same way that Free Speech is. Remembering these two events in Berkeley and Catalonia is a good opportunity to not forget human rights, to fight for them, to defence them, if we want to live in something called Democracy.
The University of California, Berkeley, also referred to as UC Berkeley, is a public research university located in Berkeley, California. Founded in 1868, Berkeley is the flagship institution of the ten research universities affiliated with the University of California system and is ranked as one of the world's most prestigious universities and the top public university in the United States.
Established in 1868 as the University of California, resulting from the merger of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland, Berkeley offers approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines.
The Dwinelle Bill of March 5, 1868 said that the University shall have for its design, to provide instruction and thorough and complete education in all departments of science, literature and art, industrial and professional pursuits, and general education, and also special courses of instruction in preparation for the professions.
In the 1960s, Berkeley was particularly noted for the Free SpeechMovement as well as the Anti-Vietnam War Movement led by its students.
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Berkeley graduate student Mario Savio. Other student leaders include Jack Weinberg, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and others.
Free Speech Movement, 1964
With the participation of thousands of students, the Free Speech Movement was the first mass civil disobedience in college campus of the United States during 1960s. Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom. The Free Speech Movement was under the influence of the New Left, and was also related to the American Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-VietnamWar Movement. It exhibits far-reaching influence on the political views and values of generations of college students, university administrations, and the general public in the United States. In 1958, activist students organized SLATE, a campus political party meaning a slate of candidates running on the same level -a same slate. The students created SLATE to promote the right of student groups to support off-campus issues. In the fall of 1964, student activists, some of whom had traveled with the Freedom Riders and worked to register African American voters in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer project, set up information tables on campus and were soliciting donations for causes connected to the Civil Rights Movement. According to existing rules at the time, fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs. There was also a mandatory loyalty oath required of faculty, which had led to dismissals and ongoing controversy over academic freedom. Sol
Stern, a former radical who took part in the Free Speech Movement,
stated in a 2014 City Journal article that the group viewed the United
States to be both racist and imperialistic and that the main intent
after lifting Berkeley's loyalty oath was to build on the legacy of C
Wright Mills and weaken the Cold War consensus by promoting the ideas of
the Cuban Revolution.
On
September 14, 1964, Dean Katherine Towle announced that existing
University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or
candidates, outside political speakers, recruitment of members, and
fundraising by student organizations at the intersection of Bancroft and
Telegraph Avenues would be strictly enforced. On
October 1, 1964, former graduate student Jack Weinberg was sitting at
the CORE table. He refused to show his identification to the campus
police and was arrested. There was a spontaneous movement of students to
surround the police car in which he was to be transported. This was a
form of civil disobedience which became a major part of the movement.
These protests were meant to illustrate that the opposing side was in
the wrong. The police car remained there for 32 hours, all while
Weinberg was inside it. At one point, there may have been 3,000 students
around the car. The car was used as a speaker's podium and a continuous
public discussion was held which continued until the charges against
Weinberg were dropped.
Free Speech Movement Students
On December 2, between 1,500 and 4,000 students went into Sproul Hall as a last resort in order to re-open negotiations with the administration on the subject of restrictions on political speech and action on campus. Among other grievances was the fact that four of their leaders were being singled out for punishment. The demonstration was orderly; students studied, watched movies, and sang folk songs. Joan Baez was there to lead in the singing, as well as lend moral support. Freedom classes were held by teaching assistants on one floor, and a special Channukah service took place in the main lobby. At midnight, Alameda County deputy district attorney Edwin Meese III telephoned Governor Edmund Brown Sr., asking for authority to proceed with a mass arrest. Shortly after 2 a.m. on December 4, 1964, police cordoned off the building, and at 3:30 a.m. began the arrest. Close to 800 students were arrested, most of which were transported by bus to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, about 25 miles away. They were released on their own recognizance after a few hours behind bars. About a month later, the university brought charges against the students who organized the sit-in, resulting in an even larger student protest that all but shut down the university. After much disturbance, the University officials slowly backed down. By January 3, 1965, the new acting chancellor, Martin Meyerson -who had replaced the previous resigned Edward Strong-, established provisional rules for political activity on the Berkeley campus. He designated the Sproul Hall steps an open discussion area during certain hours of the day and permitting tables. This applied to the entire student political spectrum, not just the liberal elements that drove the Free Speech Movement. Most outsiders, however, identified the Free Speech Movement as a movement
of the Left. Students and others opposed to U.S. foreign policy did
indeed increase their visibility on campus following the FSM's initial
victory. In the spring of 1965, the FSM was followed by the Vietnam Day
Committee, a major starting point for the anti-Vietnam war movement.
For
the first time, disobedience tactics of the Civil Rights Movement were
brought by the Free Speech Movement to a college campus in the 1960s. Those approaches gave the students exceptional leverage to make demands
of the university administrators, and build the foundation for future
protests, such as those against the Vietnam War. The
Free Speech Movement had long-lasting effects at the Berkeley campus
and was a pivotal moment for the civil liberties movement in the 1960s. The
Free Speech Movement was seen as the beginning of the famous student activism that existed
on the campus in the 1960s, and continues to a lesser degree today.
There was a substantial voter backlash against the individuals involved
in the Free Speech Movement.
Joan Baez supporting Free Speech Movement
Ronald Reagan won an unexpected victory in the fall of 1966 and was elected Governor. He then directed the UC Board of Regents to dismiss UC President Clark Kerr because of the perception that he had been too soft on the protesters. The FBI kept secret files on Kerr and Savio, and subjected their lives and careers to interference under COINTELPRO. Reagan had gained political traction by campaigning on a platform to clean up the mess in Berkeley. In the minds of those involved in the backlash, a wide variety of protests, concerned citizens, and activists were lumped together. Furthermore, television news and documentary filmmaking had made it possible to photograph and broadcast moving images of protest activity. Much of this media is available today as part of the permanent collection of the Bancroft Library at Berkeley, including iconic photographs of the protest activity by student Ron Enfield, then chief photographer for the Berkeley campus newspaper, the Daily Cal.
A reproduction of what may be considered the most recognizable and iconic photograph of the movement, a shot of suit-clad students carrying the FreeSpeech banner through the University's Sather Gate in Fall of 1964, now stands at the entrance to the college's Free Speech Movement Cafe. Earlier protests against the House Committee on Un-American Activities meeting in San Francisco in 1960 had included an iconic scene as protesters were literally washed down the steps inside the Rotunda of San Francisco City Hall with fire hoses. The anti-Communist film Operation Abolition depicted this scene and became an organizing tool for the protesters. The Free Speech Monument, commemorating the movement, was created in 1991 by artist Mark Brest van Kempen. It is located, appropriately, in Sproul Plaza. The monument consists of a six-inch hole in the ground filled with soil and a granite ring surrounding it. The granite ring bears the inscription, This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction. The monument makes no explicit reference to the movement, but it evokes notions of free speech and its implications through its rhetoric.
Today, Claire Fontaine & The Grandma havegone to Sitges to listen to a legend of music and a great human rights activist, Joan Baez. They love her songs, many of them are considered hymns, and they admire her activism in defence of human rights around the world.
Claire and The Grandma don't live disconnected of the real situation of their day-by-day in their country which is suffering a terrible repression of a state that doesn't respect human and civil rights and attacks free speech and cultural difference.
Listening to Joan Baez is an incredible opportunity to take enough force to go on, to resist under this regime of repression, and also a wonderful way of remembering the fight in a favour of the civil and human rights along the last decades, a strong struggle reflected in the lyrics of her songs and in the beauty of her unforgettable voice.
Before going to Sitges, TheGrandma has studied her Ms.Excel course.
Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice.
Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. Although generally regarded as a folk singer, her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s, and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country, and gospel music.
Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other composers' work, having recorded songs by Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and many others. On her past several albums, she has found success interpreting songs of more recent songwriters, including Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant and Joe Henry.
She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status.
Songs of acclaim include Diamonds & Rust and covers of Phil Ochs's There but for Fortune and The Band's The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. She is also known for Farewell, Angelina, Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word, Forever Young, Here's to You, Joe Hill, Sweet Sir Galahad and We Shall Overcome.
Claire Fontaine & The Grandma in Sitges
She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts.
Baez also performed fourteen songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, humanrights and the environment.
Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7, 2017.
Baez was born on Staten Island, New York, on January 9, 1941. Joan's grandfather, the Reverend Alberto Baez, left the Catholic Church to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when her father was two years old. Her father, Albert Baez (1912–2007), was born in Puebla, Mexico and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to -and advocated for- a Spanish-speaking congregation.
Due to her father's work with UNESCO, their family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq.
Joan Baez became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series American Masters, is the true core of her life, looming larger than music.
The opening line of Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With is I was born gifted, referencing her singing voice, which she explained was given to her and for which she can take no credit. A friend of Joan's father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her to play rhythm and blues, the music she was listening to at the time. Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a life of drug addiction.
When Baez was 13, her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend took her to a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and Baez found herself strongly moved by his music. She soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga, California for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City, California Jewish congregation. A few years later in 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson acoustic guitar.
Her true professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. Following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, Joan Baez (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists.
The War Is Over! Rally, May 1975
From the early-to-mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan, and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, and Bonnie Raitt.
Baez's distinctive vocal style and political activism had a significant impact on American popular music. She was one of the first musicians to use her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, singing and marching for human rights and peace.
Pete Seeger, Odetta, and decades-long friend Harry Belafonte were her early social justice advocate influences. Baez came to be considered the most accomplished interpretive folksinger/songwriter of the 1960s. Her appeal extended far beyond the folk-music audience.
In 1980, Baez was given honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the universality of her music. In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards, performing Dylan's anthemic Blowin' in the Wind, a song she first performed twenty years earlier.
Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including AmnestyInternational's 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope tour and a guest spot on their subsequent Human Rights Now! tour.
In 1993, at the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by the Soros Foundation, she traveled to the war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina region of former-Yugoslavia in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war.
On April 4, 2017, Baez released on her Facebook page her first song in twenty-seven years, Nasty Man, a protest song against US President Donald Trump which became a viral hit.
In 1956, Baez first heard Martin Luther King, Jr., speak aboutnonviolence, civil rights and social change which brought tears to her eyes. Several years later, the two became friends, with Baez participating in many of the CivilRights Movement demonstrations that Dr. King helped organize.
Martin Luther King, Jr. & Joan Baez
In 1958, at age 17, Baez committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California, for an air raid drill.
The early years of Baez'scareer saw the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. become a prominent issue. Her performance of We Shall Overcome, the civil rights anthem written by Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan, at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom permanently linked her to the song.
Baez again sang We Shall Overcome in Sproul Plaza during the mid-1960s Free Speech Movement demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, and at many other rallies and protests.
Her recording of the song Birmingham Sunday (1964), written by her brother-in-law, Richard Fariña, was used in the opening of 4 Little Girls (1997), Spike Lee's documentary film about the four young victims killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
In 1965, Baez announced that she would be opening a school to teach nonviolent protest. She also participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights.
Highly visible in civil-rights marches, Baez became more vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War.
Baez was arrested twice in 1967 for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California, and spent over a month in jail.
Baez was instrumental in founding the USA section of Amnesty International in the 1970s, and has remained an active supporter of the organization.
In 1976, she was awarded the Thomas Merton Award for her ongoing activism.
In 1989, after the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing, Baez wrote and released the song China to condemn the Chinese government for its violent and bloody crackdown on thousands of student protesters who called for establishment of democratic republicanism.
In a second trip to Southeast Asia, Baez assisted in an effort to take food and medicine into the western regions of Cambodia, and participated in a UnitedNations Humanitarian Conference on Kampuchea.
On July 17, 2006, Baez
received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Legal Community
Against Violence. At the annual dinner event, they honored her for her
lifetime of work against violence of all kinds.
In 2015, Baez received the Ambassador of Conscience Award.
Joan Baez & Bill Shipsey visit Carme Forcadell in prison
In 2016, Baez advocated for the Innocence Project and Innocence Network. At each concert, Baez informs the audience about the organizations' efforts to exhonerate the wrongfully convicted and reform the system to prevent such incidents.
In December 2005, Baez appeared and sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot at the California protest at the San Quentin State Prison against the execution of Tookie Williams. She had previously performed the same song at San Quentin at the 1992 vigil protesting the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the first man to be executed in California after the death penalty was reinstated.
Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which proposed banning all gay people from teaching in the public schools of California. Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk, who was openly gay.
On Earth Day 1999, Baez and Bonnie Raitt honored environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill with Raitt's Arthur M. Sohcot Award in person on her 55 m-high redwood treetop platform, where Hill had camped to protect ancient redwoods in the Headwaters Forest from logging.
In early 2003, Baez performed at two rallies of hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as she had earlier done before smaller crowds in 1991 to protest the Gulf War.
In August 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle to join them in London, UK, at the Concert For a Landmine-Free World.
In the summer of 2004, Baez joined Michael Moore's Slacker uprising Tour on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming national election.
In August 2005, Baez appeared at the Texas anti-war protest that had been started by Cindy Sheehan.
On June 25, 2009, Baez created a special version of We Shall Overcome
with a few lines of Persian lyrics in support of peaceful protests by
Iranian people. She recorded it in her home and posted the video on
YouTube and on her personal website.
On March 18, 2011, Baez was honored by Amnesty International at its 50th Anniversary Annual General Meeting in San Francisco. The tribute to Baez was the inaugural event for the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights.
On November 11, 2011, Baez played as part of a musical concert for the protestors at Occupy Wall Street. Her three-song set included Joe Hill, a cover of the Rolling Stones' Salt of the Earth and her own composition Where's My Apple Pie?
Joan Baez has been a strong defender of the Catalan independence movement due to its non-violent nature. On July 21, 2019, she described Catalan independence leaders as political prisoners. A few days later, on July 26, 2019, she visited former President of the Parliament of Catalonia Carme Forcadell in prison.
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